These days, the sound of the English language, through the medium of popular song, is heard wherever there is a radio set. It is a commonplace tourist experience to hear a familiar English refrain in a coffee bar, bus station or elevator, or simply issuing from the window of a house on almost any street in any town. Often, it is a source of despair. We travel to ‘get away from it all’ and ‘it' follows us everywhere we go. We enter a local night-club in our holiday destination, and all we hear is the current top twenty. ‘Happy birthday to you' is widely sung at children's birthday parties. Finding genuinely local music can be extremely difficult. Several commentators have remarked on the way which western popular music has threatened the life of ethnic musical traditions everywhere.